Fearless Quilting

After all that practicing of the woodgrain design it was time for me to go on my actual project.

First though I basted my table runner. I did this in a loose grid following the seam lines where I could in order to keep it straight. I thought that this might help me to keep my design straight.

This time I used red thread for the basting so I could actually see the stitch line well enough not to get confused with my stitching. 

Thread choice! I was going to quilt this with a grey-ish thread, however during my trials did not really like this over my leaves that much. Also, the grey was much lighter than the background so every little imperfection was going to be a feature. Tried all sorts of different thread ideas...from different colours down to Invisafil and finally ended up with monofilament thread. This was not the original idea but I thought  that I did not really wanted the quilting to take over the project, rather the quilting was to go into the background and just give me the texture. The star of the quilt was supposed to be the falling leaves.

So, I made a start with Monofilament thread. I chose Superior Monopoly thread for this rather than the Aurifil Monofilament thread. Maybe I imagined it but I thought that the Monopoly thread just looked that little bit more matte than the Aurifil thread. So, I made a start...

You know that stupid feeling when you are starting something not that familiar...this fear of totally stuffing it up and for a moment then you are hesitant to start. Well, I still get that after all those years...however, I did make a start and it started to look quite decent. 

Mind you, came across another issue...skipped stitches! Not a lot, but one or two per row...enough to be annoying. Changed my needle to a Microtex Sharp 80/12 needle and also reduced my stitch length and that fixed the issue, except for one or two seams which seemed particularly bulky where the thread just did not grab. Noticed that when I went slower and more deliberate I could largely avoid this. For Bernina Q20 users:

Stitch length: 12 in BSR1

Tension: 1.25

Bobbin Thread: Aurifil 50/2

So, I kept going and going, the design going pretty much out of shape as soon as I started. You can see above that I did my first wavy line with a wave ruler to get off to a good start. I did echo this once and then started on the knots, then echoed again and slowly but surely got a bit out of shape. Must say that I did not mind my lines a bit flatlining here and there...with a bit of concentration and looking (and thinking) ahead this fixed itself up after a few rows.

Almost done...you can see that I lost a bit of straightness going towards the edge of the quilt and also managed to put some bigger, ugly spaces in...was not really too worried about it as you cannot really see the stitching...was actually glad that I chose the monofilament after all...I think it would have looked totally overwhelming in a slightly different grey colour. Like this you only notice lots of texture which is what I wanted for this quilt.

And here is the finish

Very organic looking...happy with the result. If I was to do this again, I think I might choose a different background, the contrast is quite strong on this piece. If I had a rusty brown for example, I could have matched the thread to that colour and it would have still looked ok over the leaves...or maybe even a somewhat faded green background. 

Well, this was good fun and I might do another one of these with a different background. But for now, I'll do the binding and then get going on writing up the pattern. 

Karin

So close...

Almost finished the quilting on my Fancy Fox quilt. I decided in the end to do a woodgrain design.

Bit of an adventure as I am quilting from the backing to the front as the backing has a woodgrain design on it.

The idea is good and its working well, however I did have some issues with the thread. I am trialing So Fine from Superior 50/3. So I set my tension for the bobbin and adjusted the top but as I went along the thread started shredding. I had a needle size 16 and did not really want to go higher so I persevered for a while, however the shredding continued to happen. In the end I switched over to a needle size 18 and the problem disappeared altogether. I am not sure it actually has to do with the thread...could actually be the quality of the grey background fabric. In stitching front to back and looking at the stitches they did not look that great in parts on the grey but were perfectly fine on the other fabric.

Initially I thought that it had to do with me or the machine tension but after a while I started to see that it was perfectly fine in the coloured areas...must be the quality of that fabric, I reckon. The above photo is taken directly after the quilting...the stitch will settle a bit and look a bit more normal after  a while. How strange is this!
Anyway, I am quite happy with how this is turning out (minus the thread issue). The woodgrain pattern is lovely and I am getting the hang of it and learning how to do it properly thanks to the backing fabric.

Karin